


these mornings bleed into your afternoons

by ephemeraltea (temporarily_obsessed)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Bad Days, Depression, M/M, Self-Esteem, pretentious title that i actually should replace but eh, short but emotional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 15:52:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1310500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarily_obsessed/pseuds/ephemeraltea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is too loud, his flesh too sensitive, and his mind too sharp and bitter and thinking too deeply, even for Tim. These days, these are the worst- the days where he doesn’t hate himself so much as completely understand why everyone else does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these mornings bleed into your afternoons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Star_Nymph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Nymph/gifts).



> Written for reasons of wanting to write a hopeful thing for a person who deserves happy things. I think I did okay.

There are days where he can’t make himself think about anything but his failures. They burn in the cords of his muscles and wrap themselves like a vice around his bones, and every step and breath and movement reminds him of the things he’s done wrong and the people he’s hurt or forgotten or lost, of the things he never gets right and who he’s held back. They make his throat dry and rough, sand his eyes and make them sting. These are the days he hates himself.

It makes him want to scratch his skin off and scrape the flakes out from under his fingernails into the trash, or maybe just never leave his bed.

For the most part, he makes himself peel out from under the covers and get dressed anyway. Sometimes he even finds the strength to take a shower, and he usually feels better if he does, but sometimes Tim cannot force himself to stand under the spray and rinse off the mild salt and sweat from sleeping. He’ll go to the Wayne Enterprises if he has to be there, increasingly less, though, which is both a relief and worry to Tim. He usually can’t explain why. Or maybe he’ll go to class, though most of them are online this semester, or even just sit in his makeshift Cave hidden in his apartment and mend his suit and fine-tune his tools, or else fix them if they’ve been damaged. These are the days, where maybe he hates himself, but he can still think and move around the hate; it doesn’t encompass his entire mind.

There are days where he can’t make himself leave his bed. Or maybe he just doesn’t try hard enough. Either way.

(Today, it turns out, is the latter sort of day.)

He’s not crying, but somehow that makes his agony worse. His stomach clenches and roils, somewhere between wanting to throw up and just a total lack of appetite. His shoulders itch but he just curls his hands into themselves and feels the bite and stick of his nails into his palms. His tongue feels damp and tacky inside the ridged cavern of his mouth. Everything is too loud, his flesh too sensitive, and his mind too sharp and bitter and thinking too deeply, even for Tim. These days, these are the worst- the days where he doesn’t hate himself so much as completely understand why everyone else does.

Where his mind remembers every mistake he can recall in painstaking detail, every flush of blood and slick of it on his flesh, every tick of a keyboard and the crush of glass. Every glimmer of loss and every dying spark of failing. Where he just. Can’t. Anymore, at all, anything.

Tim curls up, knees to chest and heels to butt and hands to spine and forehead to knees. It hurts, a little, to be so tightly coiled and his muscles so tense, but the distraction of ache helps a little. Not a lot, but a little. The clock in the hall tocks, obscenely loud in its echo in Tim’s head, and a computer hums somewhere in the living area.

It’s easy to hear when Jason comes home- the click of the lock and thump of the door being kicked shut, and the soft scuffling noise from Jason’s boots on the floor.

“Tim?”

He’s in the doorway of their bedroom now, but Tim just rolls his forehead on the round of his knees and says nothing. Jason sighs, a strangely colorless sound from such a vibrant and passionate man, and drops onto the bed gently.

“Bad day, then,” he says, not unkindly and certainly more gently than Tim would have expected two years ago. But Jason- Jason gets this. Maybe he doesn’t understand exactly how Tim feels or where it comes from, but Jason understands enough. About being overwhelmed with an emotion you can’t control, with feeling cold and useless and bitter, with not understanding _why do I feel this way why me why me am I really that despicable please why why why?_

So Jason doesn’t try to get under the covers, either, or pull Tim out from them, or try to make his boyfriend talk about it right now (though perhaps tomorrow or the next day, or whenever this melancholia passes enough). He crawls closer, though, and wraps his arms loosely around Tim’s body, bound though it is by the covers of their bed. He just lets the presence of his body and his love rest beside Tim for now.

It is enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> So. Okay. I'm really proud of this, not least because it's the closest I've come to writing out what the depression I have experience with is like. But also because the descriptions have strong imagery.


End file.
